First heard on Christmas Day, 2008, when Gregory Maguire read it aloud on NPR's All Things Considered, this is "a reillumination" of Hans Christian Andersen's tale of "The Little Match Girl." Maguire notes that while Andersen stories like "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling" retain their power to charm, the transcendent nature of the match girl's death is obscured by its tragedy for most modern audiences. In this book for all ages—illustrated by the author with delightful ink drawings—her story becomes part of a larger one in which the living and the dead are inextricably linked, and the match girl's fate is intertwined with that of a boy named Frederick.